


Cold Porridge

by suicider00m



Series: Dan Howell has an eating disorder 'verse [3]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Anorexia, Eating Disorders, Hopeful Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 13:38:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10742778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suicider00m/pseuds/suicider00m
Summary: Dan doesn’t need anyone to break him; he can do that himself.





	Cold Porridge

**Author's Note:**

> warnings for eating disorders
> 
> this was supposed to be a drabble but it ended up being nearly 3k so enjoy

It starts because he wants to play piano.

He was twelve and he remembers being so excited his first day, arriving to his teacher’s house with a list of songs he wanted to learn and the theory books his parents had gotten him, and not even the sour look on that old woman’s face could ruin his mood because _he was going to learn how to play the piano._

She tells him to sit, doesn’t bother to ask his name or how he’s doing but he doesn’t even notice as he’s too busy trying to keep from bouncing on the bench. She frowns as she flips through his theory books, placing them on a table in the corner before picking out one of her own and placing it in front of him. She starts talking about scales and chords and sheet music symbols and it’s so much to take in but Dan tries his hardest to remember every single word. 

She plays a C major scale and then tells him to do it, and he tries but his fingers keeping slipping on the keys and more often than not he’s playing two notes instead of one. She grabs his hands, sneers as she looks down on him, and then tells him, “Your fingers are too fat, you’ll never be any good at this.”

Dan wants to cry but he doesn’t, just keeps trying and failing to play a C major scale until his teacher announces his hour is up and it’s time for him to go home. When he gets home he promises himself that he’ll prove her wrong, that he’ll be the best student she’s ever had. He really tries for a while, practices every day and watches video tutorials online and listens to so much classical music that he feels like he could play every instrument in an orchestra, but in the end it’s only a few more weeks before he quits his lessons and forgets about the electronic keyboard gathering dust in his basement. 

No matter how hard he tries though, he can’t forget about his stupid, _fat_ fingers.

. . . 

By the time Dan is sixteen, he’s finally grown into his body. No more awkward baby fat on his cheeks or his hips or thighs, and even though he doesn’t have much muscle, he’s still lean and skinny. Except for his fingers.

It’s awful because he can hide his legs under sweatpants, hide his stomach and arms under oversized jackets, but he can’t hide his _fat fucking fingers._ He’s stuck with them, unfortunately, and he does his best to hide them under long sleeves and sweater paws, but whenever he’s playing video games or on his laptop it takes every inch of his self control to not sit there and stare at them for hours. Most of the time it works but sometimes it doesn’t and he sits there and stares and just _hates_ what he sees.

He doesn’t particularly care about his weight, it’s not like he’s _fat_ or anything, but he figures if he sheds a couple pounds then maybe his fingers won’t look so disgusting. So he eats healthier, cuts the junk and sweets out of his diet and it works. Kind of.

His body looks better, not as much pudge on his stomach or legs, and he even _feels_ better. He gets compliments from his friends and family on how he looks so much slimmer, more toned, _healthier,_ but no one says anything about his fingers. 

They’re still as fat as ever.

. . . 

Dan is eighteen when he first kisses a boy. It’s not a big deal, not really, because he’s always been comfortable in his sexuality, and he kissed the guy as a dare, but it _is_ a big deal. The guy is dainty and delicate, soft skin and hard bone, and when he disappears upstairs with some other guy later on in the night, Dan knows the jealousy in his stomach isn’t because he wants to be the other guy.

No, Dan wants some boy to look at him like he could _break_ him. 

He’s still been eating healthy, and he’s lost a little more weight over the past year, but at some point it stopped and now Dan wants it to start again. He’s too lazy to exercise other than pacing in his room, and there’s not really anything unhealthy to cut out of his diet, so when he goes home that night he looks up ‘how to lose weight’ and writes down everything he finds.

He eats 1200 calories a day, and it’s hard at first but with enough water and diet soda it gets easier. After a few weeks his stomach stops rumbling and he finds it easy. He’s losing about a pound and a half a week and everything's going great. That is, until he stops losing weight. 

He knows he’s at a plateau, he’s read about them online and he knows he’ll start to lose weight again eventually, but it’s not soon enough. He’ll be going to University in a month and he wants to look good when he gets there, so he starts eating 1000 calories a day and cuts red meat out of his diet. 

He’s knows that restricting his intake below 1200 is unsafe, but he reasons that it’s only for a month until he arrives at school, then he can go back to eating normally. He starts pacing more often too, for almost an hour or more, and the stomach rumbles come back but he knows how to ignore them. 

After a week he steps on the scale with pride to see he’s lost 2.4 pounds.

. . . 

Phil is… _Phil._

Dan meets him at Uni, only a freshman while Phil is a senior. They share a video editing course and Phil offers Dan a pen when the boy’s own runs out of ink. Sitting together becomes sharing notes, and sharing notes become studying together, and the next logical step from there is hanging out without reviewing work or quizzing one another. It’s strange, at first, being friends with someone four years his senior, but as time goes on he becomes more comfortable with the idea (and other ideas, not that he’ll admit it though). 

It doesn’t seem like they’ll have to because Phil invites him over one night for a movie and takeout and not even 20 minutes into the second movie, they’re kissing. It’s soft and sweet and barely lasts more than a few seconds before they’re pulling apart. Dan knows his face looks stupidly surprised but Phil just smiles at him before turning back to the movie, leaning back on the couch and pulling Dan against his side. 

With his legs in Phil’s lap and Phil’s arm around his shoulders, Dany feels _small_ and any thoughts of calories go flying out the window.

. . . 

Two years later Phil’s graduated, Dan’s dropped out, and they own a flat together in London. They’re together now, properly together; no more wondering if dates were actually _dates,_ looking away quickly so as not to be caught by the other, hands brushing as they walked but never taking hold. Now it’s morning cuddles on couches while sipping their coffee, sharing showers when they’re in a rush, limbs entwined under warm comforters as they sleep. It’s wonderful and amazing and perfect and Dan has never been happier, except he’s taller than Phil now.

Not by much, of course, maybe half an inch or three quarters, but with the realization that he’s taller also come the realization that he’s _bigger,_ and he can’t change his height but he can change something. 

He’s gained weight since Uni, from growing taller and not watching what he eats as much, so he goes back to 1000 calories a day, cutting junk and sweets and red meat, and this time any drinks with calories too. He starts drinking his coffee black and Phil gives him a strange look when he does, but Dan just brushed the other boy off and says something about, “Trying new things,” and Phil just shrugs and lets it go. 

Dan even goes so far as to buy a piano and start teaching himself how to play again, because every time he looks at his ugly, fat fingers he feels too sick to eat. Soon enough, 1000 calories a day becomes 800, and not long after 800 becomes 600, and soon he’s eating 400 calories a day without even trying. 

It scares him sometimes, how easy it is not to eat. He doesn’t think about it, spends mealtimes going for jogs around the neighborhood or doing crunches in the guest room under the guise of napping, and Phil doesn’t really notice. They’ve never been one for set meal times, or even meals for that matter, instead snacking throughout the day. They always have dinner together though, but Dan eats that every day and if his portions become smaller and he starts to leave more on his plate, Phil doesn’t notice. 

Dan tells himself that’s a good thing.

He keeps losing weight and if sometimes he feels too exhausted to move, if he stands up and the world around him starts to go black, if his heart beats too hard or worryingly slow, he chooses to ignore it. He’s fine, he’s eating enough to function and that’s all that really matters, right? He figures he’ll go back to eating normally once he’s lost enough weight, just like in Uni, but he’s not entirely sure just how much is enough.

He calculates his BMI and is surprised to find himself on the lower end of normal. Sure, he’s lankier than most, and his weight always seems high because of his height, but he never thought he’d be considered so _small._ It seems strange that with only ten more pounds he’d be considered underweight, so he decides to lose fifteen, just to be safe. He looks at his fingers and decides twenty would be better.

. . . 

It take Dan a month to lose the thirteen pounds.

He knows he’s gotten smaller, can see it on the scale and in the mirror and from the worried looks Phil keeps giving him, but he still feels like it’s not enough. He reminds himself that he’s still got seven pounds to go before his goal, and maybe by then he’ll be satisfied. But he looks at his fingers and although they look better, they still don’t look thin enough and he can’t help but fear that the seven pounds won’t be enough. He pushes the fears away though, tells himself that he’ll lose the seven pounds and then decide if he wants to lose more.

(He won’t admit he’s scared that he’ll always want to lose more.)

He occupies his time with work and working out, and any spare time is spent online reading about diets and weight loss. He spends almost his entire day with Phil but it feels like he barely sees the man, like he’s in a different world entirely. At the five pound mark, Phil stopped showering with him. At ten pounds, they slept on opposite sides of the bed. Dan should be worried that they’re drifting apart but a sick, twisted part of him thinks that if Phil left him then he wouldn’t have to eat dinner anymore. 

He’s in the guest bedroom looking up weight loss tips and tricks, trying to ignore how fucked up it is that he’s so terrified of his boyfriend seeing his laptop that he won’t even let them be in a room together. It’s all the same, everything he’s read before on what not to eat and how much water to drink, when he stumbles across something… _different._

He knows he should be shocked by this, horrified even, but this is exactly what he’s been looking for and he fucking dives into the rabbit hole.

He goes to the diet section first, reads about keto and monos and the ABC diet and it’s so much to take in that he doesn’t know how he’ll remember it all. He grabs his dream journal, abandoned after less than a week, and starts writing everything down. He finds out he should weigh himself in the morning right after using the bathroom rather than after a day full of drinking and eating, learns how to hide his habits so that no one tries to stop him before he’s reached his goal; he makes list after list of banned foods, ways to distract himself, and reasons to lose weight, and he doesn’t stop for a moment to think that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t okay.

That maybe _he’s_ not okay.

. . . 

Dan doesn’t realize he has a problem until he spends an hour trying to convince himself to eat a bowl of porridge that’s long gone cold.

After seven pounds he decided five more, and five more after that, and then just these last five pounds and he can go back to his normal diet. But this _is_ his normal diet: black coffee and cold water and nothing but dinner (and sometimes not even that). He wants to keep pretending that he’s okay, that he’s fine, that _he’s in control,_ but as time goes on and the pounds go away he’s getting more and more desperate for reasons that he _isn’t_ fucked up.

Phil barely looks at him. Dan’s been sleeping in the guest room for almost a month now, shivering under too many blankets and trying to pretend that he’s always cold because Phil’s not there to keep him warm. They don’t talk, not really, not unless they have to; it’s like they’re roommates, strangers occupying the same space because it’s economically beneficial to both parties. They only ever eat dinner together, and even then they don’t talk. They just sit at opposite ends of the table and stare at their plates until they’ve finished and they can finally find an excuse to leave. Dan doesn’t leave the house much but Phil does, going out with friends and having fun at parties and the only reason Dan knows this is because he stalks Phil’s Twitter. 

He’s jealous, and he knows he has no right to be because he’s the one who pushed Phil away, but he _is_ and it hurts him to see Phil out with all these pretty, skinny boys. Dan is skinny, so why doesn’t Phil go out with him? Why won’t Phil look at Dan? Why won’t Phil even _touch_ Dan?

Dan knows, he knows, he knows, he _knows_ that Phil doesn’t like how thin he’s become, but part of him — that awful, _awful_ part — thinks that with the last five pounds Phil will start to love him again. He misses Phil, misses the soft touches and sweet words. He misses feeling loved, and he’d do something about it but self-hatred is so easy to come by these days and it doesn’t require anything besides looking at his _stupid fucking fingers._

But Dan hating himself and Phil loving him aren’t mutually exclusive, so he decides to actually make an effort. He wakes up before Phil, decides to make them some breakfast. Pancakes and bacon for his boyfriend, and a bowl of plain porridge for himself. He has time before Phil gets up so he decides he’ll go ahead and eat his own breakfast now before starting on everything else. It’s surprisingly easy, he thinks, as he watches the bowl in the microwave; he’s not nervous, not panicking about going against his plan. If anything, he’s actually feeling hungry.

He sits down at the table, ready to eat, and… nothing. He just sits there, doesn’t take a bite, doesn’t pick up the spoon, doesn’t do anything but stare. He doesn’t know why he can’t do it, all he knows is that _he fucking can’t._ He can’t eat it, he can’t throw it away, he can’t get up and go back to his room; all he can do is sit there and watch as the porridge cools.

It’s about an hour later when Phil walks in, still yawning, but stopping abruptly when he sees Dan at the table. Normally, all he’ll catch is a glimpse of the boy as he grabs his coffee and heads back to the guest room, but this isn’t normal, _Dan_ isn’t normal, and Phil has no idea what to do.

He walks over, sits down at the table across from Dan, and waits. And Dan looks up, looks at him with such hopelessness that Phil feels all of the guilt and insecurity and mistakes from the past few months crashing down at once. Dan looks at him, and in a fragile, _broken_ voice, says, “I need help.”

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for any mistakes I'm going to go back and proofread this later
> 
>  
> 
> hmu @ twentyoneboyfriends on tumblr


End file.
